Telephone communications have become vital in today's society. Reliance on the dissimilation of information over the telephone has increased and will continue to increase. Several occupations, such as stock brokering, fire protection and police protection depend on receiving communications over the telephone. Still other services, such as home food delivery, rely solely on telephone communications for their very existence.
While receiving orders for services over a telephone is fast, it lacks the physical record of an order received on paper. To solve this problem, recording devices such as multichannel recorders which can record up to 56 voice communications at the same time are used. For example, police or fire departments use such recordings to show when a report was received and from whom. Stock brokers also rely on the telephone to receive and record phone orders.
While such recorders often provide for checking the integrity of the recording device itself, there is no provision to insure that the recorder remains properly connected to the telephone line. In addition, because such recording devices are attached to the telephone line in parallel with the telephone, the telephone will continue to operate even if there is a failure in the recording circuit. Thus, there is no immediate warning of a problem.
Because of the importance of the information recorded in these circumstances, constant assurance that the recording device is properly connected to the telephone line is needed. While a periodic manual check of the telephone line can be made by the user, this solution has the drawback of unduly occupying the user's time and energy.
Accordingly, what is needed is a device which will identify when there is a problem with the phone line leading to a recording device. Such a device should be able to monitor the activity on the phone line without interfering with the operation of either the telephone or the recording device. The present invention meets these desires.